


tune

by alynshir



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Freeform, Gen, Second Person, everyone go read all souls who take up the sword by anotetofollow, lorelei tabris - Freeform, reference to alistair's death, tabris gone rogue, this is the bad place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24676447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alynshir/pseuds/alynshir
Summary: The silver Swan, who, living, had no Note,when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat.Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,thus sang her first and last, and sang no more:"Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise."(the silver swan, orlando gibbons)a study in lorelei tabris (who belongs to @anotetofollow)
Relationships: Alistair/Female Tabris (Dragon Age), Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	tune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anotetofollow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotetofollow/gifts).
  * Inspired by [All Souls Who Take Up The Sword](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24259354) by [anotetofollow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotetofollow/pseuds/anotetofollow). 



> so maybe i feel a little bonkers and so maybe it is 2 am and so maybe i am thinking about my pal @anotetofollow's warden lorelei tabris and her experiences during the 5th blight leading her to where she is in all souls who take up the sword. i have typed the title of it three times now so legally you have to go read it. let me be clear this is fanfiction for fanfiction.
> 
> also, listen to this ambient mix while reading this for maximum vibes here: [x](https://videogames.ambient-mixer.com/tune--the-ambience-)

it’s a funny thing, really, although, now that you think about it, it’s not quite funny at all. what was the point, even? what was the point of it all?

of course, you’ve been asking yourself this question for ten years, seven months, thirteen days, and you’ve still yet to come up with an answer, and part of that, you think, jaw tightening, is because you’ve never wanted one. an answer _explains_ things. an answer brings things into firelight, into sunlight - the wretched, beautiful thing -, and you think that if you look too closely at an answer, it might make things make too much sense, and then you’d have to live with that. and how can you? what is there to live with? oh, that you know the answer to, though, there isn’t anything to live with, because you died long ago. that you’re still breathing to this day is. well. it’s something of a minor inconvenience, is what it is, but you’ve always been good at using what you’ve got.

it’s never been enough, though, has it? this time it will be enough. there was never a point, but you’ll make one, you’ll tear a point with your bare hands, your broken nails from between the infested, despicable ribs of whatever cynical bastard thought it was time to have a laugh. gallows humor, really, but you've escaped your noose time and again, and you’ll be the one laughing. (actually, you don’t remember the last time you laughed.)

memory’s a funny thing too, these farces of days. everything is sharper than it used to be - you’d always expected it’d be the opposite, that you’d forget, but no, of course you wouldn’t be so lucky - and it digs into the scarred parts of you that are tired of trying to heal, like a splinter made of glass and shattered bones and broken blades, your head is full of splinters, full of thorns. you remember thorns, though it’s been some time since you’ve seen one, and - ah, you wince, that’s a splinter in itself, too, you remember thorns like you remember the strangled little berry bush behind your home in the alienage, you remember waiting every summer with growling anticipation for it to remember it was alive and for it to bear fruit, for it to prove itself useful. you remember the year winter had come early. it had never recovered, and had crumbled into nothing but bitter branches, nothing but brambles. death is inevitable, your father had said, you remember him saying that, but you don’t remember whether you were eight or eighteen, death is inevitable, he’d said, and it’s what comes before that makes it count. berries or final breaths? you don’t remember. you remember rolling the last berry in your fingers. it had been overripe, and had stained you. berries, or blood? you can’t tell the difference. you don’t think the stains ever came out.

(you also remember thorns on a rose, but you stop thinking about that. you can remember, but you won’t. there’s no point. it’s dead. so are you. so is he. so is it. there’s no point. everything’s dead. except for you. you’re not. but you might as well be. you should have been. your knuckles clench, your jaw aches, you should have been, it should have been you,)

oh, and this is a dance you do alone, you sing the swan song that should have been every time you close your eyes, and isn’t it getting old? aren’t you tired of it? sometimes you wish you could be, but you think sometimes that’s worse. you have never been good at letting go, not when it mattered, and it’s never mattered, anyway. has it ever mattered?

no, you don’t think, but you’ll make it. it will matter. you will sing the song your father sung in quiet when you were younger, when your mother never came home, you will sing the song the hahren sang too many times when you were too young to understand the loss stained into the words and the wood of the vhenadahl, stained like berry juice and like the blood of a boy seen too few summers, you will sing that song until every wicked creature in the world below sings it too, and

yes, you’ve noticed somewhere in the way of things that the music has taken your hand and led you down paths none would know to follow, none would dare to, that it has taken to teaching you new steps that are as old as ages gone by, you’ve noticed that what once came in whispers now arranges its own orchestra in the hollows of your bones, in the places where the rot eats away, that is where the music grows. not much grows, under the ground, you used to think, how could it, why would it, but you know better now, you know that strange things grow where the light of day fears, you know, you know what creeps in your veins its supposed to be wicked and supposed to be your end, but doesn’t it know that your life ended long ago? doesn’t it know that its efforts don’t matter, that it is singing to an empty chantry and to a world long since abandoned by its gods, its parishioners? don’t the hahrens and the weeping mothers know they shouldn’t be singing to you, for you? they have miscast your role in all this, but the orchestra stays ever-tuning its ancient strings, and

you will sing, one day, you can feel the song building in your throat like a cough left unfettered, one day you will sing with every breath you have left and maybe by then you will have done something worthy of a finale, something that will bring no reprises or encores because you will be the final word in all of this, you will no longer be the useless briars but the winter that crushes the berry bush, and didn’t you know the berries were poisonous all along?

you remember the way you scrubbed your hands, trying to get the red out, trying to remove the splinters, was it then or was it later? you were a child both times. you were all children. you don’t know if you ever stopped being one. you think you died before you ever became real. whoever you would have grown up to be, you think whoever she was died when a warden’s oath died true. you remember the way the dark blood had stained, the way the glass around his neck had shattered too easily, the way it had splintered against your fingers as they had trembled against his throat, as they had searched for any sign that you had ever done enough before, that you had done enough that this could be salvaged,

your own oath has grown long since sour in your throat and against your skin and your soul that have both grown rotten in the dark, but it is an oath you will die for, because you should have done so ten years, seven months, thirteen days ago, and every breath you take has been borrowed and for every stolen moment you will make the darkness pay, you will wreak cacophony on every member of this wicked orchestra, you will make what lies beneath suffer and you will be what lies in wait down below for whatever dares break your oath, you will be what the shadows fear, and then perhaps it will finally be enough,

the quiet conductor smiles in falsetto, in a swan song that was stolen from you, and the orchestra begins to tune again, you know these notes, you know this song, it is just as it was before, and you hum along, a quiet thing in the darkness, you know this song - it is not a dirge, but a devotional.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact the song in the summary is a madrigal and it is about madrigals getting replaced by other kinds of music i think idk i read the wikipedia like a whole ten minutes ago u cant expect me to remember


End file.
